The most important thing happening in the world at the moment is the fabrication of chips in the TSMC factory in Taiwan. These are the chips that are going to power the next generation of AI. It's possible that these may be the chips that mean that the Earth is inhabited by two intelligent species instead of one. Surely, one of the most momentous changes in human existence.
This is not to minimize the suffering of the people in the wars in Ukraine and Palestine. But even if those wars escalate and become regional conflicts, the historians of the 22nd century are unlikely to see them as the direct drivers of major cultural and economic changes. Trump and Xi will be barely-remembered historical figures.
Throughout history, when major events occur, there have been songs and symphonies written about them. The 1812 Overture; The Emperor Concerto; The Revolutionary Étude; The Eroica Symphony; Finlandia; A Survivor from Warsaw; War Requiem; Aleppo; Khadija. I’ll include the Warsaw Concerto in the list not because it is a particularly good example, but because I like it and can play it.
So where is the song cycle about chip fabrication?
I decided to write a movement for each phase of the chip fabrication process, of which I’ve done three so far. I didn’t write them in order, and as I’ve been studying it more, I realise that the 4-movement (“quadtrych”) I was going to write isn’t going to be enough, so it will probably turn into a septrych or something.
I felt it should have a strong AI influence, so I’ve been using udio very extensively. It’s been a new style of composing for me. Normally I compose at the keyboard or very occasionally on manuscript. But AI-assisted composing is different. I generated fragments and then extended multiple times, chose something that aligned with what I wanted, discarded the other extensions, and then trimmed down the one I chose if it went somewhere I didn’t want.
The “Intense Light” movement took about 30 or 40 iterations of trimming and extending until I was happy with it. I tried to make “Crystal Growth (Czochralski Process)” longer, but I couldn’t get it to work in a way that I was happy with — and there was one very short iteration that did work, so I went with that.
The lyrics are the words for “light” in hundreds of different languages. In the most intense part in the middle it switched to artificial spoken languages instead of natural ones.
The orchestral accompaniment is AI-generated. That’s not the same as “I generated a MIDI sequence that was then turned into an orchestral accompaniment”. (e.g. I used some Garritan software to turn this Serbian folksong into a wedding march).
Instead, the orchestral accompaniment in the lithography cycle is an AI-generated waveform. This gives it a much more random time signature and more natural sounding ritards and a tempos. It also makes it much harder to change anything.
But I wanted a real voice for the artificial lyrics. I wanted a voice that was young, a pre-adult voice that would live through the life-altering changes that the TSMC factory chips will bring, and encoded the promise of future possibilities. I also wanted a soprano coloratura who could hit a high E♭ and who could carry over the loudest of orchestral passages. Fortunately, I was able to call upon Ivana during the holidays before she started her final year of high school, and got her permission and her parents’ permission to record her remarkable voice.
We recorded another two movements this week, but I think they still need a bit of audio work before I’m going to release them. Hopefully sometime soon I’ll have time to write a few more movements.
For now, enjoy!
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